Winches have been conventionally utilized to facilitate pulling loads or objects. It is well known in the art to permanently mount a winch on the front of a vehicle to enable the vehicle to extract itself from a river bed or muddy terrain. By permanently mounting the winch to the front of the vehicle, such vehicle can be extracted only if an anchor object, such as a tree, is in front of the vehicle. Extraction of such vehicle is much more difficult, if not impossible, if the only anchored objects are located behind the vehicle.
Another variety of applications involving winches includes vehicles to which trailers are mounted, such as boat trailers. In this situation, the winch is fixed to the boat trailer which is connected to a hitch mounted to the rear of the vehicle. While such winches are well adapted for drawing the load onto the trailer, the difficulty encountered is in backing the trailer, often in a blind situation, thereby necessitating the use of rear-view mirrors and reverse turning directions.
Rear hitch-mounted winches have been used advantageously to extract vehicles, but are thereafter removed. Disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,159,368 and 3,718,317 are winches which are detachable from rear-mounted hitches. The structures of these winches loosely engage around a hitch ball to sustain a pulling load, but cannot sustain a downward load, such as experienced by a trailer or other transportable load attached thereto.
It can thus be seen that a need exists for a portable winch which can be easily, releasably mounted to the front or rear of a vehicle. There is also a need for a winch that is mountable to a vehicle hitch, and that is load-bearing as to other trailer equipment mounted to the winch. There is yet another need for a front-mounted hitch, which may be employed in connection with a load-bearing winch, for connection to trailers so that the trailers can be pushed by the vehicle.